


Not Built in a Day

by Siria



Series: After the Other [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-03
Updated: 2007-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:40:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been more than a year, and they still keep separate houses. Not because there's anything stopping them from moving in together—no disapproval from family or friends, no hindrance at work, no vile toenail-related habits revealed by weekends spent together—but because there's still some indefinable something between them, something which means that Rodney can't ask him, and John won't offer. It means that most evenings, they part at Front Gate with an absent-minded kiss, promises to call later, to not forget that CD in the morning; John turns to the left, Rodney to the right, and they both go home alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Built in a Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a very belated birthday present for Trin; with thanks to Cate for betaing.

It's been more than a year, and they still keep separate houses. Not because there's anything stopping them from moving in together—no disapproval from family or friends, no hindrance at work, no vile toenail-related habits revealed by weekends spent together—but because there's still some indefinable something between them, something which means that Rodney can't ask him, and John won't offer. It means that most evenings, they part at Front Gate with an absent-minded kiss, promises to call later, to not forget that CD in the morning; John turns to the left, Rodney to the right, and they both go home alone.

More than a year; and then one evening, Rodney stays in work far too late, just like he used to before John. He has a stack of papers to grade and progress reports to file, determined to finish them for fear that the physics department secretaries will finally look for his head. It's a task he approaches with a grim expression on his face and a red pen in his hand. Rodney settles in after his last tutorial of the day, cup of coffee at his elbow, and he doesn't look up until it's fully dark. His neck aches and his back hurts, he's in a foul mood from the sheer scale of undergraduate stupidity through which he's had to slash and burn, and according to the clock, it's well after eleven. They'll be closing the front gates soon, and if he's not careful, he'll miss the last bus.

He gathers up his stuff, laptop and keys and pen tossed carelessly into his satchel, and is just about to clatter his way down the side stairs and out of the building when he notices another office light still on. _John_, he thinks, exasperated, and sighs; pokes his head around the nearest door to see that John is slumped over his desk, head propped on one hand, half-drowsing and still filling in what looks like a requisition form. Another person's job, normally, but Maura quit a couple of weeks ago, and bureaucracy and funding cutbacks have meant that a replacement's been hard to come by this late in the year; John's been doing the job of two people lately, on top of his own research, his own writing, and it shows in the dark circles under his eyes.

"Come on," Rodney says, reaching over to pull the pen out of John's hand, "up, come on, you're the picture of academic devotion, really, but I'm not paying for a taxi, and if we don't get a move on, we'll miss the last bus."

"What?" John protests sleepily, but Rodney just pushes him out of his chair and towards the doorway, flicking the light off behind them.

"You're coming home with _me_," Rodney says, as if he somehow hadn't been clear before, "The Provost has only just trained me out of falling asleep in my office and scaring the crap out of the cleaning ladies in the morning. I don't think he'd relish having to do it a second time. Come on, hurry up, no, _leave the work_."

They just make the last bus, the only passengers on the top deck of a 16A made empty by cold rain and the quiet of Dublin on a Wednesday in late April; they sit in the back row, huddled together like teenagers or like friends. John's tired, quiescent, and he leans into Rodney's warmth, his head on Rodney's shoulder; Rodney stares out the window and holds John's hand as they bump and rattle their way along O'Connell Street and up the incline of Parnell Square, rubbing a thumb against John's palm.

The bus pulls over the bridge into Drumcondra, and John stirs and mumbles "Almost home?"

Rodney stiffens a little at that, that John already considers... He swallows, but John doesn't seem to notice, and after a moment, Rodney agrees. "Almost home."

The driver says "See yiz, lads" when they get off, his voice a hoarse city-rasp of cigarettes and exhaust fumes; the road up to Rodney's house is quiet this late at night, filled with nothing but the sodium-yellow of the street lights, the rows of neat red-brick houses. They stumble up the path to a door with peeling green paint and step inside; Rodney drops their bags in the hallway and pushes and pulls John into the living room, drops him onto the couch and hisses "Stay."

He goes into the kitchen and makes tea, running through the familiar ritual with kettle and cups while keeping one ear cocked. It takes a minute or two, but then there's a brief flicker of noise that means the tv's been switched on, and through the walls, Rodney can hear the blurry, excited noise of the commentators running through hurling rivalries decades old. His shoulders relax a little, knowing John's routines, the habits of his body; John's not going to stir now.

He comes back in a few minutes with a mug of tea in either hand—his with just a splash of milk; John's is real culchie tea, brewed strong enough that it's almost stewed, plenty of milk, lots of sugar—but John's already asleep on the couch, shoes kicked off and feet tucked up. Rodney sits on the floor next to him and looks, just looks, at the sweet curve of John's mouth and the laughter lines around his eyes; with his free hand, he reaches up to run an idle hand through John's hair. John pushes lightly, unconsciously into his touch, and something twists in Rodney's gut at that, something marvellous and unnameable; it makes him wonder what would happen if it were like this always, if John were to live here with him. If John were to stay.

There's something very maudlin about contemplating things like this at half past midnight on the floor of his own sitting room while his tea goes cold, and Rodney likes to pride himself on a distinct lack of quality—at least while he's sober. He shakes himself and steals the remote from John's lax hand. He switches the tv over, drinking quietly while contemplating the respective merits of Crusher and Troi. When the familiar theme music kicks in, John stirs next to him, a slow and thorough stretch of body, and mutters "Hey, was watchin' somethin'."

Rodney snorts, but lets it go, because he's not in the mood for another debate on the merits of Sky Sports versus the SciFi Channel. He settles for saying _shut up, it's my tv_ and _you were asleep_ and _anyway, it's time for bed, Sleeping Beauty._ He tugs on John's arm until he clambers off the couch, leads him up the stairs by hand though he knows that by now, John could probably navigate this house with his eyes closed.

Rodney pulls him into the bedroom and draws the curtains, strips John of his clothes by degrees and inches, presses a kiss to a well-loved temple, the so-soft skin of a shoulder. He pulls back the bed covers and brings John to lie down with him, to sleep in his arms, and as Rodney drifts into sleep, contented and warm, and thinks that in the morning, he won't just let John leave. Maybe, maybe he might just ask him to stay.

* * *

Nothing can happen right away, of course. John says "Yes, _Rodney_, yeah," kissing Rodney with a smile that has no hesitation behind it when Rodney stammers his way through the question the next morning; but April is shading quickly into May, bringing with it the spectre of end-of-year exams, sleep deprivation and imminent aneurysms from students and staff members alike.

Rodney had all his exams prepared and typed up months ago, thanks to his innate understanding of the fact that annual exams are something which crop up _once a year_; it's something which the college's Exam Office still hasn't grasped, the fact that thousands of students have to be examined surprising them anew each May; so in between handing out papers and specifying that answering five questions with proofs does not, he repeats _not_, mean answering four or six with accompanying doodles, Rodney spends hours on the phone explaining to incompetent bureaucrats that a hundred students can't be examined in a room built to hold fifty and that yes, _yes_, the senior freshman physics class actually exists.

He makes most of these phone calls from John's office, sitting on the windowsill or rolling slowly back and forth on the broken computer chair that normally lives in one corner of the room. There's a perfectly functional phone in his own office; in fact, he has a perfectly functional office of his own, as John points out at length; observances which he punctuates with the tiny paper planes that he folds out of Post Its and throws at Rodney's head.

Rodney dismisses them all with a wave of his hand, and insists that he's better off making his calls from here for a myriad of reasons. He ticks them off on his fingers one particularly slow and Dublin-grey morning: now that new staff have been hired and the end-of-year paperwork cleared from John's desk, he isn't being kept occupied enough; keeping John out of mischief and tom-catting is clearly vital for the smooth running of the university; not to mention the fact that Rodney needs someone to dictate exam venues to, someone to bring him sandwiches, someone to listen to him rant about the sheer stupidity of the IT department because otherwise his head would explode, and that would be a tragedy of the first water.

"Sure," John says, lips quirking the way they do when he's trying to suppress a smile. He goes right back to his own work, diligent even while stroking one hand slowly down Rodney's thigh when Rodney is _clearly_ trying to have a very important pissing match over the phone with the head of the School of History. Flustered and red-cheeked, Rodney glares at him, but John ignores him just as thoroughly and guilelessly then as he does later, when Rodney tells him to write something down; in the end, he has to huff, snatch the pen from John's hand and scribble things down himself.

"I should have known," Rodney snaps when he hangs up, "that I couldn't rely on you to make yourself useful."

John grins. "Ah, I don't know about that," he says, kicking the door of his office closed. He steps closer, slowly, and Rodney's hard just from the intent in John's eyes, in the way he walks. John reaches down to cup Rodney through his trousers before he pushes him up against his desk, then kisses him until Rodney's eyes are drifting closed and John's pressed hard and tight between his legs; kisses him until Rodney's shivering hard enough that when John sinks to his knees to blow him, Rodney's already relying on the desk to hold him up.

It's slow, and then slower still, no sound in the room but Rodney's babbling and the creak of wood; John sucks gently, stroking Rodney's stomach with his free hand; sucks until Rodney loses all words and has only the sense of the meaning behind them, has only what he can convey with soft sounds of desperation and helplessness and love, his body arching into John's touch.

* * *

By the beginning of June, everything's over for another year—for the students, at least. They're slowly leaving, abandoning the lecture theatres and the labs for summer jobs and backpacking trips through Eastern Europe, leaving the cobblestoned quads to fill up with tourists. Now, when Rodney stumbles into the Arts Block coffee shop each morning to get a styrofoam cup of bad coffee before trudging up to his office, he doesn't have to dodge mindless, poseur undergrads wearing Ugg boots and perma-tans but mindless, snap-happy tourists in shapeless shorts and bum-bags. He's proud of how well he represses the urge to intervene when they misread their guidebooks and try to look for the Book of Kells in the downstairs toilets, or when they wonder loudly to one another about whether they'll get to see Oscar Wilde.

"I think he lives near here," one woman with unfeasibly big hair drawls to another, all foreign vowels and loud voice, "You know, I think he's just so _witty_? I'd just love to get his autograph," and Rodney knocks back half his coffee in one gulp instead of speaking. He thinks that counts as a sign of personal growth.

He calls John a little later to complain about it, though, because ignorance is ignorance, even if it's literature related; he's halfway through his workload, almost blissfully, blissfully free until late August, but the stacks of paper in front of him seem interminable.

"Next year," he tells John, pushing up his window just a crack to let in the summer breeze and the scent of freshly mown grass, "I'm getting one of my grad students to do all of this for me."

"Thought you said that you were never letting one of them near your paperwork again," John says, "Not after what happened last year with the yelling and the Senior Dean and the book-throwing."

"Yes, well," Rodney snaps, rubbing unconsciously at the spot on his temple where a very heavy copy of Shakespeare's collected works had clipped him, "perhaps it's time I reconsidered. I have in front of me a paper which contains a proof, that if true? Would deny the existence of gravity. _Gravity_. Join with me in looking out the window and watching the entire population of the Greater Dublin area drift off into—"

"Breathe," John says, before Rodney hears a loud thump, made tinny over the phone line, and a heartfelt "Ow! Christ Almighty!"

Rodney sits up straighter. "John?" he says, "Is everything okay?"

There's silence for a moment before John says, ruefully, "Gravity seems to be working in the south of the county, anyway. Suitcase fell on my head."

"What? How—oh, you're packing?"

"Kind of," John says, and Rodney doesn't have to see him to know that he's got one hand rubbing at the nape of his neck, that the expression on his face is rueful. "Mostly I'm staring at my wardrobe and wondering how the hell I got so much stuff in two years. Do we need a tent?"

"What?" Rodney says, baffled at the non sequitur.

"Two-man thing, sort of... green. Don't know why I bought it in the first place, and I'm not sure if I can fit it in my car, but—"

"John," Rodney says, shutting his eyes, and resisting the urge to let his head drop onto the desk. He's tense, on edge, and right now he doesn't think he can cope with John having his own version of Rodney's little freak-out the night before, the one that had left him standing in the doorway of his bedroom at two in the morning, staring at the room that is going to be his and John's for—oh, forever, if Rodney manages to be the luckiest bastard in the world—and wondering how he's going to do this, have this, be this man who can love John Sheppard, and not fuck it up completely.

"Right." John clears his throat. "I'll, uh, see you this evening then. At home."

"Yeah," Rodney says, "See you at, at home." He hangs up, and stares out the window for a moment before getting back to work. It takes him longer than it should to realise that the reflection looking back at him is his own face, smiling.   


* * *

  
Their first evening together, John pulls the phone cord from the wall and turns off the router. Rodney eyes him nervously from the couch.

"This isn't the prelude to some kind of shlock horror movie, is it? The hot, popular jock boyfriend turns out to be an axe-wielding, flesh-eating zombie maniac, and I have to flee in terror when I realise that the call is coming from inside the house."

"Sure, Rodney, I'm a big zombie and I literally want you for your brains."

Rodney sniffs, and reminds John that there is no call for sarcasm, and tries not to squirm when John flops down next to him and pokes him in the shoulder. "We," John tells him, "are having our very first evening at home. No outside interruptions, feet up in front of the telly, and pizza's on the way from Dominos—two of 'em, extra large."

"Right, because that seems very—" Rodney says, but he subsides when John flicks on the tv and curls up next to him, resting his head on Rodney's shoulder.

John channel-hops for a while before Rodney clears his throat and says "I hope you got extra pepperoni." Rodney can feel the rumble of John's amusement, a vibration that passes from John's torso to his.

"Sure."

"And no olives."

"Not one."

"And please tell me that we're not going to spend the evening undergoing the slow and painful lobotomy that is _Fair City_?"

"Ah, come on," John says, and Rodney can feel the curve of his smile, warm against his shoulder. "Paul's child by his first ex-wife is just about to let it slip to his second ex-wife that he's been having an affair with the wife of your man who's dying from prostate cancer. It's classic."

"It's written by someone with the intelligence level of a particularly slow rhesus monkey, it's shoddily acted, and I think there have been about fifteen logical inconsistencies and implausible coincidences in the last five minutes alone," Rodney snaps, but he slings an arm around John's waist, keeping him close, keeping him warm.   


* * *

  
"You just going to leave the last of the pizza there?" John says later on, when they finally decide to stop mocking Channel 4's late night offerings and go to bed.

"Oh, no," Rodney says, waving a finger at him, "you are not going to get all neat-freak on me now that we're living together, are you?"

"What?" John blinks at him, then yawns briefly, a quick flash of neat white teeth. "No, I was just thinking we should put it in the fridge if we want it for breakfast."

Rodney gapes at him for a moment, then leans in and presses a quick kiss to John's mouth. "See, that? That thinking is why I'm having fairly athletic sex with you on a regular basis."

John smirks.

* * *

The front hallway is still piled high with unpacked boxes when Jeannie turns up on their doorstep—crates of books and DVDs, cases of CDs and piles of old research material, golf clubs and old hurleys—the jumbled flotsam of John's life, still stacked there a week after he's moved in, all of it slowly spreading out through the house, battering up against the things that Rodney had gathered around himself when he was still alone.

Jeannie raises an eyebrow at the clutter when Rodney answers the door to her, but otherwise ignores it as effectively as she ignores Rodney's outraged yelps of: what she's doing here; where she thinks she's going; who the small child with her is; what does she mean, he's an uncle; yes, yes, of _course_ there's tea; where's the father, does she know who he is; no, he wasn't implying that she was a Fallen Woman; you've got a farm raising organic what _where_; yes, it's... it's good to see you, too.

In ten minutes, Jeannie has them both seated in the kitchen with mugs of tea while his newfound niece—Madison, apparently, a miniature version of Jeannie, all curls and mischief—runs around the back garden with the cat. Her shrieks filter in to them, echoing faintly off the pale yellow walls, the scuffed tile floor that Rodney can dimly remember his father laying, hard work made vague and inconsequential by the passage of time. Rodney's uncomfortable and uncertain, and he's really not sure why.

Jeannie props her chin in one hand and looks at him. "Okay, Mer," she says, "Spill."

"I told you not to call me that," Rodney says, bristling.

"Yes," she says, "but you also told me that you were, quote, 'never coming back to this shithole of a country.' And then I find out from Aunt Carmel that she's heard from the neighbours you've been back here for four years, and I never heard a word out of you."

"I thought you didn't talk to Aunt Carmel?"

"I don't," Jeannie says, matter-of-factly. "She's an aul' cow, I hate her. But she felt the need to ring me yesterday and not only did she give out to me _again_ for my terrible judgement in 'allying myself to a lunatic goat herder', but this time she was wondering why I hadn't stopped my black sheep of a brother from turning our parents' home into a house of sin and open debauchery." Jeannie arches an eyebrow. "Now, either you're running the world's quietest and geekiest brothel, or there's something important going on that I don't know about—above and beyond the fact that you came back from the States and _didn't tell me_."

"Ow!" Rodney says, rubbing his shoulder, "therapy has made it very clear to me that violence is not an acceptable form of punctuation, Jeannie—"

"Mer," Jeannie says, and this time her voice is very kind. "Spill."

Rodney takes a breath, but before he has time to say anything, he hears the sound of a key scraping in the front door lock, the muttered curse that John makes when he stumbles over the set of golf clubs every single time he comes home. There's the series of noises Rodney has already become used to, even after so few days—coat and scarf off, hung in the hall cupboard, keys tossed in the bowl on the hall table, complaints about how the 13A never runs on time—and then John pokes his head around the kitchen door and says "You'll never guess who I ran into in Hodges Figgis—oh. Hi, I didn't know we were having visitors."

He shoots a curious look at Rodney, who is draining his now lukewarm cup of tea in the desperate hope that it will contain enough caffeine to get him through what's coming. "Hi," John says, reaching out to shake Jeannie's hand, "I'm John."

"Jean Miller; and that little hellion running around in your back garden is my daughter, Madison." John smiles politely at her, but clearly without any recognition of her name. She arches an eyebrow and jerks a thumb in Rodney's direction. "I'm that one's sister."

"Oh," John says, "Rodney's told me... actually, he's kinda told me nothing about you." Rodney can see how John straightens up almost imperceptibly while he speaks, spine stiffening just enough to make Rodney feel uncomfortable on his behalf. To make him feel guilty.

"I'm just shocked," Jeannie says dryly, "to find that there are some things Mer won't shoot his mouth off about."

"I'm not... wait, did you just call him _Mer_?"

Rodney groans, and calculates the force that would be required to knock himself unconscious, if he were to accidentally let his head fall forward against the kitchen table.

* * *

John cooks for them that evening; Madison helps, setting the table while John cooks—a big pot of pasta in a creamy sauce, crusty rolls of fresh bread that he sets to heat in the oven, fruit juice for Maddy and a chilled bottle of white wine for the adults.

When Rodney and Jeannie come back from having had a Little Talk in the sitting room, John and Maddy are sitting equitably at the table. John is chewing on some bread dipped in olive oil while Maddy alternates between getting sauce all around her mouth and chattering away at him—the scattered, joyous babble of a five-year-old for whom there is nothing in life so wonderful as her best friend in school, helping her father on his farm, an afternoon spent playing in the sunshine with her uncle's cat—which, she informs them, is no longer called George, but now rejoices in the name of Miss Kitty.

If John has any curiosity about what kept them occupied in the other room for two hours, he doesn't show it. He talks easily with Maddy until she droops, and then carries her upstairs so that Jeannie can put her to bed; he chats with Jeannie over another bottle of wine, about house prices and the Miller family's most recent holiday to the south of France, the changes in Galway since either of them have lived there, what it's like to go from a life of harried academia to a life spent on a goat farm in rural Clare; pulls Rodney into the conversation when he shows signs of falling quiet.

He even manages to draw a couple of childhood anecdotes from Jeannie—what this house was like when she and Rodney were small, how much the neighbourhood has changed. Confirmation that the couple of photos Radek Zelenka e-mailed John haven't been touched up, but that Rodney really did have that much hair when he was a teenager; helping Jeannie to make pointed remarks in Rodney's direction about _certain brothers_ who take off to the States while they're still in their teens, and who don't come home for years.

He smiles, eyes crinkled with warmth, and he talks, but he makes no mention of the fact that before today, he had no idea that the man he lives with had any living family; makes no mention of the fact that before today, Jeannie had no idea that her brother had a boyfriend.

If he has any curiosity, he makes no mention of it that night in bed. They stumble upstairs just as Wednesday is about to turn into Thursday, Jeannie heading into the box room she's sharing with Maddy, John and Rodney falling into their own bed.

"Before you ask—" Rodney says, struggling to sit up despite his tiredness, in the hope that he can pre-empt whatever John is going to say.

"Wasn't planning on asking anything," John says, shucking off his t-shirt and jeans, toeing off his socks. He's sitting on the side of his bed, and the line of his back is so straight, the set of his shoulders so tense, that Rodney's own back aches in sympathy.

"You—what?"

"Well, not tonight anyway." John leans over and kisses Rodney, pressing him back against the sheets while he opens him up with gentle touches and lewd tongue, nipping at the crooked slant of Rodney's mouth, sucking at the pulse that flutters in the hollow of Rodney's throat. It's hot and wet and obscene, all of it, faster and harder than John usually kisses, here in their bed; and even with the knowledge that his sister is in the next room, his _niece_, Rodney's hard and gasping softly, his eyes wide with want.

John bites down hard against the skin of Rodney's shoulder, and Rodney's hard in the way that only John can make him. A caress along his side, against the back of his knee, and Rodney can feel his whole body blooming, opening up; he's just about to spread his legs, to say 'more, John, more,' no matter who can hear him, when John lifts his head, quirks his lips in something like a smile, and says "Like I said, not tonight, anyway," before rolling over, punching his pillow, and lying down to sleep.

"What?" Rodney splutters, "You can't just, I mean, you can't do that to a person and..."

"Really, I kind of can. Tomorrow," John says, without turning around to look at him, "_Meredith_."

Rodney stays awake for a long time; for some reason, he's not very consoled by the fact that the set of John's shoulders tells him that he's awake, too.

* * *

The next morning, Madison's up at an obscenely early hour; Rodney hasn't seen the sun rising in years, not since he was doing his very first undergradute degree, before experience taught him that staying up very late was preferable to getting up very early. He groans at the sounds of some god-awful cartoon show filtering up the stairs, over the top explosions and squeaky voices, turning over in an attempt to mould himself up against John's body and go back to sleep.

All he finds, however, is the warm patch where John used to be; Rodney cracks open one eyelid to find that John is sitting on the side of the bed, hair already damp and spiky from the shower, jeans pulled up and blue shirt half-buttoned. It's the kind of sight that makes Rodney want to pull John down onto the bed, to undress him slowly, slide his fingers under rumpled fabric, spend the day in a cocoon of warm sheets and warmer touches—but John clearly has different plans, because when he sees that Rodney's awake, he grins and reaches over to whip the duvet off him.

"Rise and shine, Meredith—"

"Can you _please_ stop calling me that?"

"—because today you're going to be a wonderful uncle, and take your niece to the zoo."

"I'm _what_?" Rodney shrieks, but apparently he is, because by nine, they're all washed, dressed and fed—or, in Maddy's case, hyped up on a particularly noxious, pure-sugar cereal that John had produced from the depths of one of the kitchen cupboards—and out of the house.

The traffic is just starting to lessen at this hour of the morning, though John's little car ends up sandwiched between a slow-moving bus and an impatient SUV for most of the trip into O'Connell Street.

"God save me from the Irish bourgeoisie," Rodney says, glowering and making an obscene gesture in the rear-view mirror when the SUV driver honks yet at them yet again. "Yeah, lady, well at least I don't need a petrol-guzzling four-wheel drive to navigate the hilly heights of Dorset Street!"

"Mer, mind your manners!" Jeannie says, making a half-serious attempt to cover her daughter's eyes so that she doesn't see her uncle give the finger to someone, just as John says "Rodney, you teach in Trinity, you kinda _are_ a member of the Irish bourgeoisie."

"Oh my god!" Rodney says, high-pitched and appalled at the prospect of his sister and boyfriend tag-teaming him for the rest of the day. If this is what his future is going to be like, if this is what it's like to have two family members who like each other and like him, who want to get along and _do things together_, then the future is going to be hell. He squeezes his eyes closed. "Please shut up!"

There's silence from there to the Phoenix Park, and Rodney doesn't open his eyes, but he can tell that both Jeannie and John are laughing at him, regardless.

It's Madison who's over-flowing with excitement when they get to the zoo proper, though, staring at the little, colourful map they get at the gate with wide eyes; tugging on her mother's sleeve and wanting to go everywhere at once, the big cats and the tropical birds, the petting zoo and the sea lions, until Jeannie takes over and decides that they're going to go see the monkeys first, a decision which Rodney gives thanks for, if only because it helps salvage some of his quickly vanishing sanity.

Maddy is enthralled with the monkeys, most of whom live on a series of interconnected islands in the centre of a small lake. She runs ahead, seeking the best vantage point for each island, not wanting to miss a single moment of grooming, or tree-climbing, or action-filled lazing around in the warm, late June sunshine. Jeannie stays with her, because there are one or two moments when it looks like her daughter might just make a break for it and try to swim across to the gibbons, or try to climb into the golden tamarinds' enclosure; Rodney sees her keep a proprietary finger or two hooked into Madison's hoodie, just in case.

"So," Rodney says, when they've been strolling along together for ten minutes and John's kept his hands in his pockets and not said a word, "About last night, or well, yesterday as a whole, really—I know that you're kind of pissed off at me, and really you—"

"I'm not angry with you," John cuts him off, looking at him from out of the corner of his eye.

Rodney tilts his head to one side. "Really? Because you could have fooled me, what with the passive-aggressive withdrawal of blowj—of _you-know-whats_ last night," he says, moderating his words and his tone just a little when a gaggle of children from a summer camp pass by, chaperoned by a couple of harried teenagers and an older woman who looks just a little too interested in what he's saying.

"Okay," John says, "So maybe I'm a little angry." He shrugs, one-shouldered. "Two years, and you haven't even told your sister? You don't even trust me enough to tell me you _have_ a sister?"

"In my defence," Rodney says, "I've been home four years and I hadn't told Jeannie I was back."

John squints at him through his glasses. "Not reassuring."

"Probably not," Rodney agrees, miserably. "I'm just—in case you hadn't noticed, I'm really, _really_ bad at this."

"Yeah, kinda."

"It's..." Rodney comes to a halt, stands and squares his shoulders and looks up at John. "Look, it's, it's just that you're, you matter to me, and Jeannie matters to me, and with my track record—I've already messed things up with her, so, so badly, and I didn't know how to find my way back, not, not after everything; and you know what I did in the States, what happened; and with you, I sort of love you a hell of a lot, and I didn't want you to see just how awful I can—"

"Rodney," John says, and somehow he's come closer while Rodney was speaking, and then he's right there, hands warm on Rodney's face and lips gentle against Rodney's own. "Shut up," he says when he breaks away, words murmured soft and low against Rodney's skin, and it doesn't feel like John is telling him to shut up at all, it feels like he's saying _I know_ and _I know you_ and _idiot_ and _Tell me, everything._

"Oh," Rodney says, "Well, I—", words that are cut short when John pulls him close and kisses him again, a kiss that's cut short when the monkeys on the nearest island begin to shriek and clamour, when Madison comes running back down the path yelling "Uncle Mer, Uncle John, I've found gorillas, come see!"

"Of course you have," Rodney says, sounding almost resigned as she tugs on his hand, pulling him forward with all the momentum of excited, childish glee. "Well, lead on. Might as well be the monkey house as the mad house."

John follows along behind him, hands in his pockets, and grins to himself, slow and steady.

* * *

They inspect fruit bats and sleek Humboldt penguins, snow leopards and cockatoos, birds whose feathers Rodney loudly declares to bear an uncanny resemblance to John's hair. Lunch is an impromptu picnic on the green slopes outside the tearooms, eaten while revelling in the heat and the breeze; it's followed by a raid on the gift shop which leaves Madison with more glittery, pink, giraffe-shaped rubbers than she could possibly hope to use in a lifetime. Later, Maddy drags Rodney and John by the hand to the petting zoo, insisting that they say hello to each goat and sheep and pig, a care that is rewarded when one of the keepers asks her to help bottle-feed one of the newborn lambs. As small as the animal is, the squirming burden is still almost too much for Maddy, so John holds it while Maddy feeds it, Rodney and Jeannie looking on.

The day is declared a success—though Jeannie's cheeks and forehead are reddened with sunburn, though John lets Rodney wander around for almost an hour with ice cream smeared on the tip of his nose, though Maddy gives in to a small fit of tears when they wander out of the grounds at the sound of the closing bell, worn out from too much excitement.

Rodney, who is driving to give John a rest, would gladly have stopped at a Burger King or a Supermacs on the way back to appease Maddy. He himself wouldn't be averse to a gallon of grease or two, but even the suggestion of it is firmly vetoed by Jeannie as being disgusting, unethical, and containing far too much fried animal muscle. "Oh my god," Rodney says, "You think it's appropriate to tell me that you're raising my only niece as some kind of, of crunchy-granola-eating vegan while I'm driving? In _Dublin_?"

Jeannie chews on her lower lip, looking so serious and contemplative that Rodney feels a sudden burst of dread. "Does that mean it's also not a good time to tell you that in seven months or so, there's a good chance she won't be your only niece?"

"A _baby_?" Maddy's tears dry up suddenly.

"Jesus Christ," Rodney yelps, hands jerking off the steering wheel in shock, and almost veers into the side of a bus. "More of them?"

John laughs so hard that he doubles over in the front seat, and it takes him a minute or two before he can congratulate Jeannie. "I'm really happy for you guys, Jeannie. That's great news."

"I want a brother," Maddy decides, with all the awful solemnity of a five-year-old. "Can I have one right now, Mammy? I want to call him Mer, after Uncle Mer. He can be Baby Mer."

"Oh god," Rodney groans. "No, no—I mean, um, congratulations. Well done, Caleb. So to speak."

* * *

Jeannie and Maddy go home that Sunday, laden down with the bags and boxes that Rodney has pressed on them in a shopping spree that couldn't begin to make up for years of absence; buoyed up with promises to call, to visit, to stay in touch, with the heart-felt hope that from now on, things will be better. John and Rodney put them on a train at Heuston, waving them off; and Rodney knows that his face must be showing something different, something new, when the train pulls out of the station, because John reaches over to take his hand, strokes a thumb up underneath the cuff of Rodney's shirt, feathers his touch against the fine skin that contains Rodney's pulse.

"They'll be back," John reminds him as they walk out of the station and back towards the car park.

"Yeah," Rodney says, "Yes, I know, of course"; but he thinks his voice sounds a little surprised, a little pleased, as if it hadn't truly occurred to him before; as if the thought of seeing his sister again, his family, is a treasure whose worth he has only just realised.

They go back to the house, and though it's still early afternoon, sunlight slanting warm and golden through the windows, they go to bed; clothes left scatter-shot the length of the stairs, along the hallway, and then they're stretching out on the bed in a tangle of limbs, a closeness of bodies, John's breath ghosting against Rodney's skin, and all of it leading inexorably to sleep.

* * *

The day after Jeannie's departure, John finally starts to unpack, and all the rooms, all the places that Rodney is accustomed to thinking of as 'his' slowly, truly, become 'theirs'. Tweed jackets find their way into the wardrobe next to Rodney's collection of bright orange and blue fleeces. Sports equipment is stacked in the cupboard under the stairs. CDs of Phil Lynott and box sets of Johnny Cash are filed away on the shelves next to recordings of Grieg and Dutilleux. Extra-large boxes of Barry's tea and an old white china teapot take up residence in the kitchen cupboard, next to Rodney's stash of Fairtrade coffee.

It's not like John has a lot of stuff, though, regardless of how well it managed to fill up the small space that is the front hallway; within a couple of days, nearly everything is stored away as neatly as it can be. All that's left are a couple of boxes of books, scholarly hardbacks and thick, airport-thriller paperbacks, that John tries to wedge into the flimsy, overcrowded bookcases in the sitting room while Rodney lies on the couch and drinks tea and watches his newly acquired _Doctor Who_ DVDs, a gift to himself after all the emotional trauma of days of a young child underfoot, days of dealing as best as he knows how with a younger sister who wanted answers.

Rodney's just about halfway through a monologue on how, exactly, Christopher Ecclestone's ears do that, when John sits back on his heels, stares at the wall and says "Don't think this is going to work."

"What?" Rodney says, sitting upright; he's dimly amazed at how calm his voice is though his heart is beating too fast, too slowly, because surely—but then, "Yeah," John says, seemingly oblivious to the look on Rodney's face. "Got a hammer and some nails somewhere, could strengthen them. Think you'd be better off with something new."

"What?" Rodney repeats, this time hopelessly confused; if he wasn't certain what John meant the first time, now he's completely lost; but then John raps a knuckle against the side of the nearest bookcase, says "Maybe I could pick up some lumber tomorrow," and _oh_; Rodney sags back against the couch in relief.

"Oh," Rodney says. "Oh, yes, that's—you make bookcases?"

"Sort of." John rasps a thumb over a jaw that's sharp with evening-stubble. "Couldn't hurt to give it a shot."

"No," Rodney says, "No, it couldn't."

John grins at him.

* * *

The next day, Rodney discovers that there are few things in life he fears more than a hardware shop in the Dublin suburbs on a bright, warm day in mid-summer. It's full of yummy mummies and screaming brats, harassed fathers looking for decking material, deceptively mild-mannered grandmothers who were arguing over the last of the cut-price bedding plants—all the thriving middle classes aspiring to better homes and better lives.

John skirts his way around and through them, Rodney trailing in his wake. He piles a shopping trolley high with something that, in Rodney's considered opinion, approaches unholy glee—he can see no reason for the careful selection of hammer and nails, a saw and a T-square, varnish and paint, and a tool belt with more pockets than Rodney can reasonably conceive any use for. That accomplished, Rodney finds his torture isn't over; they head around to the yard around the back of the shop in search of a guy named Bob, whom they were assured at the helpdesk can supply them with enough lumber to build a second Ark.

Maybe not an Ark, Rodney thinks, watching as John considers the weight and the worth of each piece of lumber before adding it to the stack they're going to take, but definitely a small boat; by the time they're heading back inside the shop to pay, he's already trying to twist space-time in his head, wondering how exactly they're going to fit all of this into John's tiny car and get it back to the house without resorting to something beyond the fourth dimension.

"Ah, we'll just about have room," John says, but Rodney can see him eyeing up a set of particularly shiny and vicious-looking power tools even as they're walking to the checkout.

"John," he says, "No," pointedly ignoring the look John gives him, as if wounded that Rodney does not recognise the sheer brilliance that is a Black and Decker Firestorm Cordless Hammer Drill and Driver, or the desirability of an industrial-strength power sander.

_Domesticity_, Rodney thinks with a sigh, as he hands over the credit card at the cash desk and pretends to be indifferent to the cordless drill which just got added to the trolley, _is not quite what it's made out to be._

* * *

_It's really not_, he thinks a couple of hours later, _not at all_; because once they get home, after a quick lunch (and a brief period of communion between Rodney and his laptop when he has a sudden burst of inspiration about exotic matter in relation to the stability of Lorentzian wormholes which, ha, should make that Carter woman in the States sit up and take notice) John carts his materials out into the back garden, spreads everything out onto grass that's baked pale green and sweet-smelling in the summer heat, and starts to build.

Rodney sits in the patio doors with a refill pad on his knee while John works; at first, Rodney is sketching out some vague mathematical models which might or might not tie in with the work that Carter—and Kusni? Kanga? Kusanagi!—have been publishing recently; but only at first. It doesn't take long, however, before all his attention is focused on John.

It's an incredibly hot day—Rodney would have considered it a warm day back when he was still living in Boston, and for the eastern Irish coast, heat this heavy is almost unheard of—and John's fringe is sticking to his forehead, damp with sweat. His t-shirt came off a while back, and now all John is wearing while he measures and saws, makes something new for them piece by piece, is a torn and ripped old pair of jeans, the brand-new tool belt, the beginnings of a deep tan. Like this, he looks nothing like an academic; no hint of the tweed-wearing researcher in the play of muscles beneath his skin, nothing hiding the arc and stretch of his body. He looks like nothing Rodney has seen before, ever; he looks like everything Rodney wants.

Rodney sits and watches him—dry-mouthed and so hard it hurts, aching to hold John to him, to fuck and be fucked—until John makes a quiet noise of triumph and steps back from the completed frame of the bookcase. The curve of his back is golden in the late afternoon sun, and Rodney swallows, throat raw.

"Just need to let the glue set, and then—" he says, walking around the bookcase as if to assess its strength from every angle, before Rodney interrupts him.

"John," he says, need-hoarse, stretching out a hand, "come to bed."

"Hmm? It's only four, Rodney, I—oh." John steps toward him; his eyes are dark and Rodney is everywhere, thrillingly, warm.

* * *

Later, panting and grinning, sprawling tangled in sheets damp with come and sweat, John licks at the corner of Rodney's mouth and says "Knew I was the rough trade in this relationship."

Rodney kisses him back, mouth wide and wanting, before hitting him over the head with a pillow.

* * *

By the time John has the bookcases built and stained and filling the alcoves either side of the fireplace in the sitting room, it's kind of obvious that he's caught the DIY bug. It would bemuse Rodney, a little, because from what little he saw of John's former apartment, it was a rather dull and characterless little box, with none of John added, nothing of him to mark his time there; it would bemuse him, but he supposes, lying in bed in the early morning, idly stroking John's hair, that this is John's first real home, too.

That thought is enough to make him stir himself later on that day, when John starts to get rid of the furniture and the dingy rug in the never-used dining room—it's a large room that gets plenty of sun, and they've decided that it would probably be better to turn it into some kind of study than let it lie idle.

John barely glances up when Rodney stands in the doorway. "Yes, don't worry," he says, a little wry, a little distracted as he measures wall length and height. "There won't be any problem with running the DSL line through here, and _yes_, I will remember to leave wall space for all your degrees."

"No, I was just..." Rodney fidgets. "I was just wondering if I could, maybe, help?"

John turns and squints up at Rodney through his glasses, but all he says is "Sure."

Between them, they get all the furniture stacked outside, waiting for a local charity to come collect them. If Rodney were a little more sentimental, he thinks, he would keep these—the dark mahogany sideboard his mother polished every Saturday of her married life, the heavy chairs and round oval of a table where Rodney and Jeannie and their parents had sat for awkward Christmas dinners, stilted Easter lunches. If he were—but he's not, he can't see himself ever sitting down to eat with John at that table, and Jeannie had long regarded the entire set of furniture as an ugly Victorian monstrosity. He consigns them to some unknown future without a hint of regret.

Back inside, they spread clear plastic sheeting over the floorboards and ready trays and paint brushes and roller. The ceiling is painted quickly enough, new white paint to freshen it up and make the whole room seem brighter and larger. After lunch, they tackle the walls; John breaks open the large tins of paint to stir them, revealing a blue that's like no ocean Rodney's ever seen while he's awake, impossibly deep and clear. John takes the smaller brush and does the edging at the ceiling and around the patio doors while Rodney uses a roller to tackle the wide expanse of the walls, covering the old, pale cream in wide arcs of colour. John's work is much more painstaking, but Rodney isn't used to physical labour like this, and his arms are soon aching from the effort; before he's even finished the second wall, John is hopping down from the ladder to look at his own work with a soft grunt of achievement.

"C'mere," he says, when he sees Rodney curse for the umpteenth time, "No, like this," stretching his arms around Rodney; fitting his warmth and his touch to the length of Rodney's back, the reach of his arms. He shows Rodney how to move, _look, it's easier like this_, how to stretch; and within one moment and the next, Rodney goes from frustrated and wondering why they didn't just hire a painter, to suddenly, wonderingly turned on.

He clears his throat and says, "You know, I think I saw a porn film like this once."

"What, the naughty interior decorator and his disobedient student?" John says, voice laughing. "Porno classic." He sounds amused, but even as he speaks, he's pressing closer still, and the intent of his touch changing.

"No, I was thinking more along the lines of movies with the touching and wanting and the, the c-contact..." Rodney stammers when John brushes a series of kisses against the nape of his neck, biting down gently against the fragile bump and jut of bone there. John's arms move down to wrap around Rodney's waist, fingers curling tenderly against his stomach, rucking up the cotton of Rodney's t-shirt. Rodney shocks himself at how suddenly, how thoroughly, that makes him go limp and pliable in John's arms, though the touch is almost innocent. John chuckles, then bites down hard enough to sting; Rodney jerks and gasps, shivering despite the July heat; he can feel how John is hard against him.

"God," he says, "_John_", letting his head drop forward, letting the brush drop from fingers that are suddenly nerveless. John makes a low sound in his throat and pulls him around so that they are facing, kissing; he backs Rodney against the wall and grinds their hips together in a slow, obscene circle. Rodney sobs, and John goes slower still.

"Wait," he says when John pulls away to rip off his t-shirt and shuck off his jeans, to pull down Rodney's shorts, "Wait, the paint..." All protests are pointless at this stage, even if Rodney had meant them wholeheartedly—the back of his t-shirt is already smeared blue, his hair is tacky with paint. There's a trail of hand prints skidding along the wall behind him, his nails leaving staccato half-moons in the blue paint, and his body's creating a twisting, arcing trail as he arches up for more of John, for more of his hot, wet mouth and the strength of his body.

John sinks to his knees and takes him in, in, swallowing hard and reaching up to cup and squeeze his balls, stroking back to tease at soft, soft skin; Rodney's head falls back against the wall. He lets his hands rest on John's shoulders, the nape of his neck and the curve of his skull, moving restlessly until John's skin, John's hair, are both streaked faintly blue. It looks strange, unreal; it looks debauched, like nothing that should be occurring in a semi-detached house in the suburbs; and when John tilts his head back so that Rodney can see the outline of his cock against John's cheek, see how John's eyelashes have fluttered closed in pleasure, it looks like the best and worst kind of sin all at once. Rodney's hips buck upwards, and John groans, letting him deeper.

It's close now, he's so close, panting and sweating; Rodney can feel pleasure coiling at the base of his spine, a warmth that's being coaxed into a furious heat by the July air, by John's touch and John's mouth. He pulls back a little and whispers "Come on, Rodney, _Rodney_, come," breath a warm-hot wash against the head of Rodney's cock, the callused palm of his hand stroking hard and insistent—his touch, his touch, Jesus, everywhere—"For me," he says, "Rodney, just for me"—and, and—Rodney's knees buckle as he comes.

When he returns back to himself, he's on the floor, held tight in John's arms, panting against the sweat-slick skin of John's neck, tasting salt and blue paint. "God," he says when he pulls back, looking down at the sight that is John Sheppard and raising one hand to touch, "your—your _hair_..."

But all John says is "I don't care, I don't," pulling off what remains of Rodney's clothing—his paint-spattered t-shirt, a solitary sock—and rolls them over so that Rodney's on his back, John pressed the length of him. John kisses him, hard and urgent, and thrusts down; Rodney can feel how quick and shallow his breathing is, the wild expansion and contraction of John's ribcage against his own. Rodney grabs at John's ass and lets his legs fall open; one of his feet kicks outwards, connecting with the still-open tins of paint, sending them flying. A full tin of blue paint and the dregs of the white paint are scattered everywhere, half on the plastic floor covering, half along one of John's hairy shins.

Rodney mutters something about lead poisoning, arsenic, poison seeping into his pores, litres of paint _everywhere_; but does nothing but offer himself up when John laughs softly, drags paint-covered fingertips the length of Rodney's thighs, up his sides, across the span of rib cage and up to the hollow of Rodney's throat. John kisses him again and again, on his mouth and his throat and his collarbone, on the delicate skin at the corner of his eye; and Rodney rocks with him, draws patterns of his own along John's back, presses two palm prints against the flexing wings of John's shoulder blades, and holds him close with arms and thighs when John comes, panting.

They lie there as sweat and come cool on their bodies, as their breathing slowly returns to normal. It takes a while before Rodney can move his head enough to look up at the wall, to see the marks he'd left in the fresh paint. It looks like a piece of abstract art—scrabbling fingers, the round impression of a head, the whiplash line of his torso—like an artist has shown someone struggling, or someone breaking free. It makes Rodney feel strangely uneasy, like he's looking at too much of himself all at once, so he starts the salvage operation for his clothing, picking up his shorts from the far side of the room before dropping them back on the floor—not even he would wear those again.

"Hey," John says when he sits up, looking at the wall with a squint that's even more noticeable since his glasses got thrown... somewhere in the previous half hour. "That's kinda cool."

"Yeah," Rodney says vaguely, rubbing at the already flaking paint on his arms, on the jut of his hipbones. "It's wonderful, like our own private art installation, quick, someone call Tracy Emin. My god, this itches. How much white spirits do we have in the house? We'll need gallons. I'll never be clean again."

John flops back to lie on the floor and laughs, great, braying, bright bursts of laughter, and Rodney's mouth twitches in response.

* * *

Three days later, Rodney is still shedding blue flakes of paint from ridiculous parts of his body, no matter how much he showers. "See, this, _this_," he says to John, storming into the kitchen and scrubbing a hand through hair that's still damp and vaguely blue, "This is why I should never have gotten involved with someone from outside Dublin. Culchies, uncivilised, uncultivated, paint-flinging _mountain men_ who—"

"Mountain men, huh?" John says, eyeing him over a bowl of cornflakes. He scratches at the nape of his neck; there's a thin dribble of milk running from one corner of his mouth. "Maybe I should wear wellies all the time? No, I should grow a beard, surprise all the library staff next month."

"Don't even _think_ about it," Rodney snaps. "Because I can come up with some choice phrases on the subject which trust me, would surprise even you."

"A really _long_ beard," John says vaguely, gazing out the window, in that tone of voice where Rodney doesn't know if he's serious or if he's just fucking with him. "I'm thinking Z.Z. Top here, Rodney."

"What, exactly, makes you think I'm joking about this?" Rodney says, flinging his hands up in the air.

"Oh, nothing," John says, guilelessly, going back to his breakfast.

"No beards!" Rodney says firmly, sitting down at the table with the largest cup of coffee he can find, and starts to liberally spread several slices of toast with butter and jam. "I mean it!" He waves the buttery knife at John for emphasis, spraying crumbs everywhere.

"Sure, Rodney," John says, standing up to make himself more tea.

(And Rodney finds out that there's nothing to joke about, nothing at all, the next evening when John scrapes an unshaven cheek against the inside of his leg, and all his thigh muscles jump and shiver. Nothing to joke about, but god, oh god, he thinks, when he pulls John up to kiss him, cradling his face in his hands, relishing the scratch of John's stubble against his palms—oh god, there's everything to smile about.)

* * *

One evening, not long after, Jeannie calls him and complains about her morning sickness; about the difficulties of helping Maddy with her homework when she's going to an Irish-speaking summer school, and Jeannie can't remember a word of the bloody language; about the stupid bastard of a goat that ate half the washing off the clothes line that morning, and had broken into the kitchen that evening and had half the contents of her pantry for dessert.

Rodney is a little bemused, a little baffled; he doesn't quite know why she's calling to tell him these things, these things that he can't possibly help with from so many miles away. He does know that it makes him feel... happy, he thinks. Whole-heartedly pleased. He sits in the window, phone tucked into the crook of neck and shoulder, and tells Jeannie about his latest research, about Project Bookcase, about something John had said earlier that had made him laugh and laugh.

"Mer," Jeannie says just before she hangs up, "Be happy."

"Yeah," Rodney says, "I will." _I am._

He sits there in silence after she's gone, thinking, and staring out at the still-untamed mess that is their back garden. After a while, he hears John come in through the front door, calling out to Rodney to tell him he's back, and that he's brought Chinese food with him. Rodney pads through to the kitchen, and brushes an absent kiss against John's cheek. John passes him a prawn cracker or three before he can steal any of the food that John's setting out onto plates.

"So," Rodney says with a grin, swinging up to sit on the counter-top, "how was your day?"


End file.
